Standing Tall, Part 1: A new life for Russian orphan

ORANGE -- Just an hour after being born, Roman Ramilovich Magsumov was left to fend for himself.

His 18-year-old mother abandoned him in a hospital in Russia shortly after giving birth on Aug. 1, 1993.

She left behind a son who was born with deformities.

Perhaps she was encouraged to follow the belief, perpetuated under Communism, that the state could better care for a child with disabilities. Perhaps her baby's medical problems were too overwhelming.

The infant had deformities in both legs and his left arm. Even his right arm had some abnormalities. Roman ended up in an orphanage.

His parents never visited him, and signed away their rights to the boy.

But the young couple did go on to have another child, a healthy girl whom they kept.

As Roman (whose name is pronounced roh-MAHN) grew up, he learned to walk on the stumps that served as his legs and to use the stump of his left arm.

The boy's irrepressible personality developed into something of a survival trait. The child who looked so different worked his charm with an endearing smile and a rowdy laugh.

He may have found a way to conquer the world a bit, but Roman owned little of it. Even the clothes he wore belonged to the orphanage.

His little-boy treasures were few: a peephole from a door, a pine-tree air freshener, and a few more things.

All of his worldly belongings fit into a zip-lock bag.

Timothy J. and Pamela B. Sweeney and their family live in a large Victorian home in Orange, with lots of space for a family that overflows the traditional boundaries.

The Sweeneys have been married for almost 15 years. He compares their relationship to a kite on a string -- he is the soaring idealist, and she is the practical, down-to-earth one.

As a girl, Pam dreamed about having four children; her three sons and a daughter -- Thadryan, now 13; Tyler, 10; Toby, 8; and Tessa, 7 -- made that dream come true.

Thadryan calls himself ``the sultan of sarcasm'' and likes skateboarding and science. Tyler lets loose with his creativity by drawing and making up elaborate stories. Toby is the quiet one in the family, and enjoys fantasy games such as Pokemon. And Tessa likes sports, crafts and spying on her brothers.

The family also shares the home with Pam's mother, Geraldine Annear, who is 65. And they provide specialized foster care for Albert Angelini, a 65-year-old with Down syndrome who has known Tim's family for years.

Tim works as director of a health-care access program and administrator of a tobacco control program at Heywood Hospital in Gardner.

For 10 years Pam has been home schooling the children, though the family has just recently decided to send their children to school.

The Sweeneys, who belong to North New Salem Congregational Church, said they believe God guides them if they pray and try hard to follow his direction. While they have free will to make choices in some matters, God can intervene in others, according to their beliefs.

As Tim likes to put it: when he decided to join a religious mission going to Russia, ``Somebody bigger than us is driving the bus.''

In January 1999, Tim went on a mission with Eastern European Outreach, an inter-denomination Christian group, for 21/2 weeks to Ukraine and Russia.

The missionaries brought gifts, as well as skits and songs carrying the message ``Jesus loves you'' to hundreds of teen-agers in youth prisons and to orphans.

Tim said he saw horrible things along the way -- a girl with only rags on her feet in the snow and a 19-year-old with holes in his stomach stemming from radiation from Chernobyl. But it was something that he had seen before that stayed with him.

Two legless veterans begging in the street -- the kind of thing Tim had seen in the United States -- bothered him terribly, he said. He threw a handful of change to the men.

Tim and Thomas E. Monk, the New England director of Eastern European Outreach, went to the last Russian orphanage of their mission at the request of a minister of education, who wanted them to interview a child and see if a family could be found to adopt him.

Tim would question the boy, who had medical difficulties, to gauge his mental condition while Mr. Monk would interpret.

The two-story brick orphanage was a former school, and the two Americans went into a living area to meet the youngster.

A little boy scampered across the floor and looked up at the American. Tim said he was ``slain.''

The smile on the young boy's face looked so familiar. Tim had seen that smile on the faces of his own children.

That boy was named Roman.

Tim picked up Roman and began asking questions through the interpreter to see if the boy could count and tell them where he lived. The youngster answered quite well.

After Tim met the boy, he said, he realized he had seen Roman's future when he saw those legless veterans begging.

Tim said he left Russia thinking that some wealthy American family needed to adopt Roman.

Each night after Tim came home, he told his kids about someone he had met on his trip, he said.

After he tucked the three boys in one night and told them a little about Roman, his son Toby came out of his bedroom.

"Tyler's got a little brother -- me. Thadryan's got a little brother -- Tyler. I don't have a little brother. If we got Roman, he could be my little brother,'' Toby said.

Eventually, Tim and Pam got over their pride and asked for help, and church members and other supporters throughout Central Massachusetts donated money to a special fund to pay for adopting Roman and to pay for items such as a bed.

The process of adopting Roman was long and ``miserable,'' Tim said. Drug testing, HIV tests, a check with a sex-offender registry, and fingerprint checks were among the hurdles they had to clear.

But Roman finally arrived in Orange with his new parents on Jan. 31, 2000. When he woke up and greeted his father on his first day in the house, he already had learned some important words in English.

The white van with a ``Got Jesus?'' bumper sticker pulls up in front of Shriners Hospital in Springfield, and the Sweeney family spills out. Roman rides piggyback on his oldest brother, Thadryan, as they head to the front doors. Once all seven Sweeneys get inside along with a reporter and photographer, Tim jokingly tells a nurse ``There's a mob in the lobby.''

It is mid-October. Roman is about to get a new set of legs.

A small piece of flesh on his left leg -- what his father calls his ``shoulda coulda foota'' -- is to be removed to allow him to wear prosthetic legs.

Upstairs in his hospital room, Roman pulls out his Winnie the Pooh blanket. He pulls a sticky candy wrapper off the blanket, provoking an amused chorus of family disgust.

``Ewww! Jolly Rancher wrapper!'' everyone cries out together.

The teasing and chatter of the big family take over the room. Roman's brothers and sister lean on the bed to watch nurses in action and watch television with him.

At one point, Roman stands on his head in his hospital bed, his shirt falling down to show his bellybutton.

Tim and Pam talk with a nurse about Roman's history.

``Anyone you'd not like to visit (with) him?'' she asks.

``Janet Reno,'' Tim jokes.

The nurse later asks if Roman has nightmares or fear of the dark. He is a little afraid of the dark, possibly because of insects that were at the orphanage, Pam says.

Once in a while, Roman twitches and cries in his sleep, before waking up and then falling back asleep, Thadryan says.

Later, Roman heads to a hospital playroom with his siblings and takes on Toby in a video game.

``Cool, dude!'' Roman shouts as he plays.

When Roman plays air hockey with Tyler, they improvise for a missing puck, using a small plastic plate instead. The competition turns fierce. At one point, Roman neatly catches the plate between his head and his left arm stump.

Later, he grimaces as he blocks a fast, straight-on shot by Thadryan, and his eyes grow wide as he plays.

The family leaves Roman to go back to Orange that night, and the next morning Tim arrives with the greeting, ``Pumpkin pie, how are you?''

Not well, it turns out. Roman had a 101-degree temperature the night before, and surgery will have to be postponed.

Roman tells his father about a girl he saw the night before who had deformed fingers and played the piano.